Girls Gone Wild ii

Know how you meet people later in life who remind you of someone from your past?  Their laugh…mannerisms…looks…walk?  Never in my life have I met anyone who reminded me of Ruthie.  Until recently when I was late to work, circling 5^th & Columbia.  I caught Ruthie out of the corner of my eye.  The sexy walk gave her away.  She turned the corner while I waited at a red light.  On green, I gunned it and turned too.  Yup.  It was Ruthie alright.

People used to say Ruthie faked that walk, but I lived with her for 9 months, and I know:  That walk was naturally Ruthie.  Arriver comme mars en careme.  That’s French for as sure as night follows day.  Ruthie was just born to walk that way.  

Girls like Ruthie fascinate us, and like most young women, I constantly compared myself to her.  It was tough sharing a bathroom with someone in such a perfect package.  Perfect size, perfect teeth, perfect skin & tone, perfect chest.   Even after our most barbarous early morning parties, never did she wake up looking anything less than darling.  Even the way Ruthie puffed on a cigarette was mythical.  Fresh on the heels of doing 4 years in the plastic environment of high school, I was conditioned to be a voyeur of the popular crowd.  And now here I was actually living with one of their trophies.

Of course, like all of us, Ruthie had issues.  And truth be told, Ruthie’s ran deep.  It’s natural to stuff our deepest wounds or avoid exposure to Light (we just keep throwing on more manure or bandaids), but inevitably there are those issues that seep out anyhow.  Like a drippy ice cream cone in the summer, they make regular messy trips inside out.  One battle for Ruthie was her permanent time lapses.  Say we’re watching a movie, and laugh at some scene.  Ten minutes later, Ruthie would laugh and comment.  We snickered and exchanged a lot of “yu boy” sideways glances at Ruthie’s belated expense.  As one guy put it, “Ruthie burnt out.”  Too many hard drugs in high school.  Plus, Ruthie could put away some vodka now.  Once she tried defending herself after a particularly humiliating time lapse, but we told her to quit being sensitive, and Denise rose her voice, and Ruthie never mentioned it again.  That was how it was with those two.  They had this co-dependant thing going.  Rarely apart from each other, they functioned (or dysfunctioned) like Siamese twins.  Denise the aggressor would parent slash dictate instructions, with Ruthie dutifully following through.  There really wasn’t room for anyone else.

One time Ruthie hid my boyfriends’ shoes, and when Denise tipped me off, I let Ruthie have it.  Of course, I figured out later on that it was probably Denise who had put her up to it, but Ruthie wasn’t ever going to expose these manipulations.  I think Denise made her feel safe, and no price seemed too high to maintain that cooky friendship.  Besides, they were still wrestling like most of the South with what was considered my boyfriend’s biggest issue - the audacity to be born black.

Still, despite Ruthie’s mental lapses and haywire passivity, like I said, she always looked great, and drew guys in like flypaper.  Okay, so they never stayed long, but to a naive hick from Montana, completely out of her element, minor details like what happens on the inside hardly mattered.  Life was surely deliriously happy if one had the outward goods like Ruthie did. 

Mike had stayed around a little longer than the rest, but after he dumped Ruthie, she stayed in her room a long time.  When she finally opened her bedroom door, she announced she was moving home.  Denise didn’t fight it because she was making plans to move in with her boyfriend anyways.  I think Ruthie felt completely lost without someone to boss her around, and I had enough of my own issues to battle and sure as heck wasn’t interested in climbing into that driver’s seat.  Though I always regretted trying.

A few of us went to visit Ruthie at home a few weeks later.  I’ll never forget the shock of walking up to Ruthie’s front door, and realizing she came from the poor end of town.  Just like me.  It just never occurred to me we had anything in common.  I guess I thought every beautiful person must come from a beautiful house too.  Ruthie’s house was a neglected ramshackle with weeds and old couches on the front porch.  She answered the door with a cigarette and bare feet, and the only thing I really remember was the shock of digesting the sexiest girl on campus coming from this.  Her family was out, which was too bad because I was sure curious about her brothers, and really wanted to see if they looked like the perverts they were rumored to be.  They say those boys did bad things to Ruthie growing up.

The strange thing about this visit was how Ruthie kept wanting to talk to me, kept putting herself next to me to chat.  I was accustomed to she and Denise being in the spotlight, so was fully prepared to take my role in the shadows with our other friends.  Only, Ruthie wanted to be near me.  Shared her cigarettes with me, and gave me some old jeans.  Stranger yet, she didn’t seem to care much about Denise’s even being there.  It was – odd.  Ruthie seemed like she wanted to say something.  She seemed anxious.  Desperate? Kept talking about moving out again when she had enough money.  I’ll never forget her parting words to us.  Something like, “It was sure great to see y’all.”  Then she turned directly to me, “Especially you, Shelly.  I really liked seeing you again.”  She paused as if she wanted to say more, but she never did.  Just smiled and crushed out her cigarette on the front porch. 

I never forgot that last visit with Ruthie.  Have played it over in my mind a hundred times.  Shoulda.  Woulda.  Coulda.  What was she saying…what was she thinking…what really happened when Ruthie went home.

I wish like hell I could have fast forwarded my life about ten years, when I met Jesus, straightened up, found some answers and Hope, and then jumped back in time with my new life, grabbed Ruthie off that porch and never let her go.  Because I had so much more to say later on.  Only, Ruthie couldn’t wait ten years for me to straighten up.  Or ten days. 

Ruthie took her life not long after I left her on that porch.  Though dulled through process of years, the pain has never really left, and one of a hundred things I’ve learned and a thousand I’ve thought of in the aftermath is you really can grow to love somebody better long after they’re gone.  Like Bob Dylan wrote, “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”  At least, that’s what I was humming when I saw Ruthie’s look alike the other week walking down Columbia.

My biggest revelation back then was that it really did matter what happened on the inside, and realizing Ruthie kept a padlock on a lot of secrets there.  It remains my greatest hope that somehow, someway - one of those was Jesus Christ. 

(Conclusion to follow ~

Reconciling Ruthie:  Hope and a Father’s Pursuit)